Mary Moore Easter introduces this new collection, her fifth, with a vivid rendering of her open-heart surgery and the removal of a life-threatening aneurism. She recounts the vicissitudes of more than a year of healing and gradual recovery, during which time she was motivated and inspired by many sources inside and outside her culture, including her connection to ancestral West Africa.

As an added bonus, several poems are accompanied by QR codes through which readers can listen to Easter sing her songs, reveling in the link between her spoken ancestry and the legacy alive in her children and grandchildren. In the midst of widespread political turmoil, Easter’s new collection celebrates the renewal of life that surgery has made possible and the ardor that accompanies it. These poems sing, dance, and love, on the edge of the mysterious precipice that shapes our lifespan.

Mary Moore Easter is the author of four books of poetry: From the Flutes of Our Bones, The Body of the World (Minnesota Book Award Finalist, 2019), Walking from Origins, and Free Papers. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Christian Century, Water~Stone, SoFloPoJo, and other publications, as well as several anthologies. Her work has been used as texts for art songs; she was Poet-in-Residence for the 2022 Source Song Festival. Born during segregation in Petersburg, Virginia, to parents on the faculty of Virginia State College (now University), she pursued a career in music and dance, eventually becoming director of Carleton College’s dance program. Awards include several Pushcart Prize-nominations, a Bush Artist Fellowship in Choreography, multiple McKnight Awards in Interdisciplinary Arts, and The Loft Literary Center’s Creative Non-Fiction Award. In 2022, Carleton College named the new studios in the Weitz Center for Creativity to honor her legacy: the Mary Easter Dance Studios.